LOS ANGELES — “Baby Mama,” Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s comedy about surrogate motherhood, delivered the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office with $18.3 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Universal Pictures laugher starring the “Saturday Night Live” duo crawled past Warner Bros.’ “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” the goofy stoner flick that opened at No. 2 with $14.6 million.
With a third comedy, Universal’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” holding its own at No. 4 with $11 million, audiences looked to be flocking to theaters to get giddy.
SIERRA MADRE, Calif. — Firefighting crews, backed by water-dropping aircraft, are working to contain a wildfire that crept to within yards of several homes in Sierra Madre, Calif., overnight.
A U.S. Forest Service spokesman said calmer winds and higher humidity should help the 580 firefighters battle the nearly 500-acre blaze that sent 1,000 people fleeing their homes east of Los Angeles over the weekend.
Only a couple of minor injuries have been reported.
Investigators have yet to find the cause of the fire.
Previous Stories:
April 27, 2008: SoCal Evacuations Ordered As Wildfire Burns
WASHINGTON — With a postal rate increase just two weeks away, Americans are buying 30 million Forever stamps a day.
The cost of sending a first-class letter will rise a penny to 42 cents on May 12, but the Forever stamps — currently selling for 41 cents — will remain valid for full postage after the increase.
Forever stamps were introduced last year and since then more than six billion have been sold, with interest growing as the rate increase nears.
WEST TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A leak has led to an explosion at a plant that turns coal into gas in western Indiana and authorities say two people have been killed.
Emergency crews have recovered the bodies of the two victims of the Monday morning blast in the city of West Terre Haute, Ind.
Plant manager Richard Payonk said the explosion at the SG Solutions coal gasification plant occurred when a metal fitting broke and released pressurized gas, which ignited.
Payonk said operations at the plant near a Duke Energy power station have been halted because of the explosion.
AMSTETTEN, Austria — A man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children with her, police said Monday.
The man, now 73, also told investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died shortly after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.
“We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime,” Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.
The daughter, who is now 42, had been missing since 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip.
Police on Monday released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom.
Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping from the cell, which was constructed of solid reinforced concrete.
The suspect, identified as Josef F., was expected to appear in court later in the day.
“He admitted that he locked his daughter, who was 18 at the time, in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children,” Polzer told The Associated Press.
Austrians — still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a young woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement cell outside Vienna for more than eight years — expressed disbelief at the latest case.
“The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong,” the newspaper Der Standard said Monday in a commentary.
Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street, told The Associated Press that the suspect and his wife would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.
This is up in several places, but it looks like the legislature may make no changes to the budget this year, and leave last year’s budget in place as is.
This would, as Capitol Watch notes, mean no increase in funding for nursing homes or nonprofits.
The AP is reporting over $750K raised at the fundraiser today. More on how much was raised for the Cappiello campaign as opposed to the CT GOP and other entities later, although I suspect it was a significant amount.
Update: Sources with knowledge of the fundraiser suggest that the money may be split 60% for Cappiello’s campaign and 40% for the CT Republican Party. That could be around $450K pumped into Cappiello’s coffers–a successful fundraiser for them, to be sure. Update 2: AP reports the same split..
Christine Stuart reports on the president’s speech in Hartford, in which he tied the fight against malaria to the war on terror:
Fighting malaria is a “strategy that advances our security interests,” Bush said.
LOS ANGELES — The Canadian reporter known as the “Scud Stud” has the makers “Charlie Wilson’s War” in his crosshairs over footage used in the Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts film.
Arthur Kent, who earned his nickname for his television coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, claims in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles that the film’s makers violated his intellectual property rights.
The lawsuit claims Universal Studios and other companies named in the suit used segments of a 1986 news program he made about the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan without his consent.
OCALA, Fla. — Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison on tax charges Thursday, a victory for prosecutors who sought to make an example of the action star by aggressively pursuing the maximum penalty.
Snipes’ lawyers had spent much of the day in court offering dozens of letters from family members, friends — even fellow actors Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington - attesting to the good character of the “Blade” star and asking for leniency. They argued he should get only probation because his three convictions were all misdemeanors and the actor had no previous criminal record.
BURBANK, Calif. — A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Thursday dismissed an unlawful smoking charge against “Transformers” star Shia LaBeouf.
LaBeouf pleaded not guilty to the charge last month after a judge issued a $1,000 warrant for his arrest when he failed to appear at a hearing. The bench warrant was later dismissed.
He was cited in February, but court documents did not contain details on the circumstances or location of the offense.